The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - new - It Brings Bad Things to Life

RunningMan

IT BRINGS BAD THINGS TO LIFE

“In the future, religious groups will get mad at me, thus boosting my book sales.”
– Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future., P 111
One of my favorite books is a little treatise by Sigmund Freud called, The Future of an Illusion. Although Freud himself was not without his problems, quirks, and mistakes, I found that the insights contained in this book makes it one of the most quotable books I have ever encountered. It is filled with pithy snippets that I continually find myself thinking about. His basic premise is that religion is a group neurosis of the human race that it will eventually outgrow. Although I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of the premise (that religion is a mental illness), I am unable to share his optimism in the second part (that humans will outgrow it). I hope, but I don’t see it happening in my lifetime. I honestly wish religion would go away. As humans, we should be finished with it by now. Why do I say this?
Well, religion has caused many bad things. In this article, I will enumerate them for you, just so that we make sure that religion gets blamed for all the right things. But, I must begin with a disclaimer. In fairness, as much as I would like to, it would be wrong to blame all of the world’s woes on religion. For example, my dog recently dug holes throughout my back yard. Try as I might, I can’t seem to find any reason to hold organized religion culpable. But, I can certainly find a lot of other reasons to blame religion for the problems of the world.
Throughout history, religion has a track record of holding back scientific and social progress; repressing people; exacerbating, if not actually starting, wars; intolerance; and sucking the economic life out of people. I suppose I should also mention that occasionally, religion encourages peace and love, and sometimes, the weak-minded among us find solace and companionship in their faith. But, when you put all of the plusses and minuses onto the scale of justice, you find that overall, we would be better off without religion.

Holding Back Scientific Progress
In the very first tale of the Bible, we learn a powerful lesson. Adam and Eve choose the tree of knowledge over the tree of life. So, God kills them. You see, according to the priests who wrote the Bible, you can’t have both. If you want happiness and eternal life, you must forget about trying to learn new things and simply trust your religious instructors.
This was a lesson that the church embraced wholeheartedly. For example, in the 16th century, Galileo came up with the heretical (and correct) idea that the earth was not the center of the universe. Threatened with imprisonment by the Catholic Church, he recanted his ideas. Eventually, the truth came to light. But, how would our lives be different today, if free thinkers in all fields of science had been able to explore their ideas without fear of the rack?
It seems that every time a new scientific idea comes into conflict with religion, either directly or indirectly, religion tries to suppress it. Fortunately, religion’s ability to succeed at this is growing weaker, but it is still not gone. For over 100 years, scientists have been fighting with religious leaders over evolution. Today, the battle still rages in pockets of religious power and ignorance, like Kansas (my apologies to Kansonians, but I don’t make up this stuff, I just report it).
Most recently, we have a debate over stem cell research. This is one of the most promising fields in medical science, holding out hope of unlocking the secrets of numerous diseases, and improving or saving the lives of countless people. Yet, the church is trying to hold it back.
Holding Back Social Progress
In Bible times, women were treated like second class citizens. It took a long time to make things better. In fact, even today, we still retain the vestiges of this archaic view of women. To be fair, we must spread the blame for this and other injustices beyond the scope of religion. I’m sure that anthropologists can name several institutions that contributed to this problem. But, my point in this article, is that religion made things worse. It did nothing to improve the lot of women, and in fact, went out of its way to make things worse.
But, the Bible’s primitive social scheme didn’t end with women. For thousands of years, humans practiced slavery. In North America, it survived until the 1860s, and its aftermath – discrimination and segregation – continued for another century. We may never have it completely behind us. Again, social and economic factors contributed to slavery. But, if you scour the entire Bible, although you will find multiple endorsements of slavery (including instructions on how to treat and sell your slave), you will not find even a single word against it. You will even find a letter from the Apostle Paul, encouraging a runaway slave to go back and be a good slave. So, when people were debating the merits of abolishing slavery, they naturally popped open their moral guidebook and found the clear answer – slavery was just fine.
Today, religion is fighting tooth and nail to deny basic rights to homosexuals. The day will come when we look back with embarassment, and draw comparisons between racial and sexual discrimination. And, although largely ignored in developed countries, the Catholic church still contributes to overpopulation and the spread of disease by forbidding contraception. Idiots.

Starting Wars
Well, this is a pretty easy one. Many of the wars on our planet were solely and exclusively religious wars. The Crusades are a perfect example. I have to wonder if the crusades did not spawn other, seemingly unrelated wars, by creating a rift between distant groups of people. Would the people of Islam and Christianity be so combative today if they had not been at each others religious throats in the past?
The list of modern religious conflicts is a long one – the Jews and the Arabs, the Muslims and the Hindus, the Catholics and the Protestants, the Sunnis and the Shiites, and on and on. Add to this list all of the historical religious wars and you get a pretty big list. Not all wars were religious wars, but a heck of a lot of them were.

Making Wars Worse
When religion wasn’t out there actually starting wars, it was always eager to throw in its expertise at making them worse. Wars are never good, but they take on a special bloodthirstiness when the participants think there is a reward in the afterlife. For example, I find it very tough for me as an atheist to recruit suicide bombers. There’s just nothing in it for them. Yet, I am continually astounded at how successful Osama has been at convincing young men to blow themselves to smithereens over the prospect of a few incorporeal virgins.
In my youth, the Watchtower would try to indoctrinate me against the evils of all other religions by relishing over the pictures of priests blessing guns in the Second World War. Soldiers were assured of their direct ascension to heaven if they died in service to their country.
Do I really need to keep going?

Intolerance
In my opinion, intolerance is the worst sin of religion, and is at the root of many of the symptoms of their failure. It’s really quite inescapable if your religion is honest. You see, every religion teaches what it claims to be the truth. If it didn’t, well, why would it bother teaching at all? And, if it is true, then by some pretty simple logic, it can be seen that groups that teach other things must be false. Add to this the idea that most religions claim themselves to be the sole keepers of salvation (again, if they weren’t, why would you follow them), and you have a recipe for intolerance. Some religions are blatant about it. They plainly state that they are right and everyone else is fodder for destruction in God’s day of vengeance. That’s how I grew up. I couldn’t play hockey at school because “you know, those boys don’t love Jehovah”. Other religions are a little more subtle. They imply their rightness and hope you catch on.
A logical extension of these very simple teachings indicates that all other religions are (in order) wrong, in opposition to God’s truth, hell-bound, and should be eradicated. Thus, the missionary is born – an idea predicated on the concept that his religion is right and whatever else he comes into contact with is wrong.
This has been used to justify war, discrimination, segregation, slavery, and whatever else you can think of.

My Religion
This article would not be complete without pausing to give a blast to my own former religion – not that they are any more culpable than anyone else, they just happen to personally piss me off, so they make a good object lesson. Having been developed in relatively modern times, my religion managed to bypass some of the pitfalls of the more ancient religions. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a pretty good record for racial tolerance. As well, to their credit, they forbid war and smoking. Unfortunately, they also came up with the poorly researched and eminently stupid ban on blood transfusions. When asked to name one belief of Jehovah’s Witnesses, the layman will undoubtedly cite the blood ban as the outstanding doctrine. As well, their practice of shunning has left a wreckage of broken homes and lives, that makes the Scientologists look innocent.
I often think of how terrifying it must be for a young Jehovah’s Witness to realize that he or she is gay. In the first place, he will be entering a position in society that is unpopular and marginalized under the best of circumstances. But, he will also have been indoctrinated since birth that homosexuality is condemned by God, unnatural, and is caused by some failure on his part. If he declares his status, he will be disfellowshipped from his religion, which means that his existing social and family structure will be destroyed. He will lose his friends and family, retaining only the ones who are willing to risk their own ostracism for his sake – and that won’t be very many, if any at all. So, to sum up, he enters society with no social or support institutions – no religion, no friends, and no family, while attempting to come to grips with a complex life, for which he has had no preparation.
It’s too bad Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in hell. Some of them belong there.
In conclusion, I have to make it clear that it would be naïve to think that the absence of religion would solve all of the problems of the world. If religion had never been invented, we would still have bad stuff happening. There would still be war, ignorance, greed, and all of the other things that we normally associate with religion. However, we would have less of them. If you take away one of the great driving forces of intolerance, division, and blind power, things will get better – not perfect, just better.

Rooster

It’s too bad Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in hell. Some of them belong there.

Ha hahahaaahahahahahahahh!

corproal

What a crock.

Blaming relion for all the social ill.s you can do better than this I hope.

IP_SEC

In fairness, as much as I would like to, it would be wrong to blame all of the world’s woes on religion.

Read much corp?

RunningMan

I believe I very distinctly stated that organized religion cannot be held responsible for my dog digging holes in my back yard. But then, sometimes I wonder.....

corproal

IP_SEC,

I read every word Runningman posted.

It still boils down tohim blaming religion.

tetrapod.sapien

It still boils down tohim blaming religion.

ya? and your point is?

note the date on this quote:

Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.
-- Richard Dawkins, "Religion's Misguided Missiles" (September 15, 2001)

TS

dorayakii

It still boils down tohim blaming religion.

ohh pooooor religion, is a JWD forum member blaming poor defenceless religion for all the bad things it has done and the ignorance it has spread, oh dear who will come to religions help?... God?...

Replace with this phrase: "It still boils down to him blaming Hitler." and your reveal the ridiculousness of that comment. Hitler did evil things and is spoken about with ill repute even today. Religion is the same. It too was the cause of Hitler's hate campaign. Was not Nazism a religion? Were not the Crusdades and the Inquisition caused by religion. Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the list goes on and on and on...

The truth has to be told... and espacially the truth about the "Truth".

The Atheist's Book of Bible Stories - new - It Brings Bad Things to Life

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